In silico Identification of Candidate Drug and Vaccine Targets from Various Pathways in Neisseria gonorrhoeae

Abstract

Neisseria gonorrhoeae is responsible for causing gonorrhea, one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases prevailing globally. Although extensive researches are in progress in order to control the transmission of the disease and to develop drug(s) against the pathogen, till date no effective vaccine or specific drug could be developed and only antibiotic treatment is in use. Perhaps, due to excess use of antibiotics, several resistant strains have been found. In the present study, metabolic pathways-related candidate drug and vaccine targets have been identified in N. gonorrhoeae virulent strain FA 1090 using an in silico subtractive genomics approach. 106 putative drug targets out of 537 essential genes have been predicted. 67 cytoplasmic and 9 membrane enzymes, along with 10 membrane transporters are found to be the potential drug targets from the host-pathogen common metabolic pathways. Among these targets, competence lipoproteins (NGO0277) and cysW have been identified as candidate vaccine targets. 20 drug targets have been identified from pathogen specific unique metabolic pathways. Out of these, 6 enzymes are involved in dual metabolic pathways and 2 are expressed in cell wall and fimbrium. These gonococci-specific proteins are expected to be better possible drug targets. Screening of the functional inhibitors against these novel targets may result in discovery of novel therapeutic compounds that can be effective against antibiotic resistant strains.

Proteome Exploration of Legionella pneumophila for Identifying Novel Therapeutics: A Hierarchical Subtractive Genomics and Reverse Vaccinology Approach

“…Among various computational methods and strategies, subtractive genomic analysis can be regarded worthy since data regarding genome and proteome are available in various online based databases. Subtractive and comparative microbial genomics are being used for the identification of targets in a number of human pathogens like M. tuberculosis [24], Burkholderia pseudomalleii [25], Helicobacter pylori [26] Pseudomonas aeruginosa [27], Neisseria gonorrhea [28] and Salmonella typhi [29]. In case of targeting genes or proteins for drug target through subtractive and comparative microbial genome analysis, the main theme is to find such targets (gene/protein) that are essential for the pathogen and possess no homology counterpart in the host [30].…”

Comprehensive Genome Based Analysis ofVibrio parahaemolyticusfor Identifying Novel Drug and Vaccine Molecules: Subtractive Proteomics and Vaccinomics Approach

“…Among the whole range of seafood, shellfish is regarded as a high-risk food because it is infested with large populations of bacteria, including V. parahaemolyticus (Peng et al, 2010;China Statistical Yearbook, 2012). Illness is inevitable, once consumers eat undercooked identified for S. typhi meningitidessero group B (Perumalet al, 2007;Barh and Kumar, 2009) using the mentioned approach.…”

“…Subtractive genomics is one such in silico strategy that helps to facilitate the selection, processing, and development of strain-specific drugs against various pathogens (Azim et al, 2019). It can be utilized to identify drug targets based on the determination of essential and nonhomologous proteins within the pathogenic organism (Barh and Kumar, 2009;Hosen et al, 2014). Various novel drug targets have already been successfully identified for S. typhi meningitidessero group B (Perumalet al, 2007;Barh and Kumar, 2009) using the mentioned approach.…”

Identification of potential drug targets and inhibitor of the pathogenic bacteria Shigella flexneri 2a through the subtractive genomic approach

“…At the genome level, drug targets for any harmful infectious agent are currently easier due to the accessibility of each host and pathogen genome sequence information (Allsop 1998;Stumm et al 2002). Nowadays, for the development of potential drug and vaccine targets against various infective pathogens, the most effective choice is computational based techniques (Amineni et al 2010;Barh and Kumar 2009;Damte et al 2013;Hasan et al 2016;Oany et al 2014bOany et al , 2017. The essential protein set for pathogen survival, however not in the host, can be identified by using subtractive and comparative genomics approach combined with metabolic pathway (Rahman et al 2014).…”